Don't make a deal with the devil

Several days ago The New York Times wrote about a "private letter" that Obama sent to his Russian counterpart Dmitriy Medvedev where he allegedly offered the Russian president a deal: Russia stops helping Iran in its nuclear program and the US in exchange stop its plans to build a high tech radar facility in Eastern Europe.
The news sounded strange to me from the very beginning. It looked like a joke: a secret letter, an attempt to make an agreement with a country that has never proven to respect its promises  (not in the least because the country itself never knows what it will look like even in a few years)... But The New York Times sounded pretty optimistic:

Mr. Bush never accepted a Moscow proposal to install part of the missile defense system on its territory and jointly operate it so it could not be used against Russia.Now the

Obama administration appears to be reconsidering that idea, although it is not clear if it would want to put part of the system on Russian soil where it could be flipped on or off by Russians. 

Mr. Obama has been lukewarm on missile defense, saying he supports it only if it can be proved technically effective and affordable.Mr. Bush never accepted a Moscow proposal to install part of the missile defense system on its territory and jointly operate it so it could not be used against Russia.

Now the Obama administration appears to be reconsidering that idea, although it is not clear if it would want to put part of the system on Russian soil where it could be flipped on or off by Russians. Mr. Obama has been lukewarm on missile defense, saying he supports it only if it can be proved technically effective and affordable.

The New York Times' coverage of Russia always looked to me a bit strange, if not stupid. It wrote about the growing wealth of Russia while I, as an alumna of the best university of Russia able to speak two foreign languages fluently, tried to get a job at a foreign company for a salary of 1000 dollars a month in Moscow - the most expensive city in the world. When I came to the US people kept wondering what I was telling them about the way Russian people really live. They thought the streets were paved with gold while most of the regions of the country don't even have any roads...

Anyway, even knowing how strange New York Times' picture of my country could be, I was surprised by their optimistic tone this time. And here is what I have to say about all that.

There are two things to think about when you talk about any serious international agreement with Russia:

1. Russian international politics is just a continuation, an appendix of an internal politics that usually is used by Russian officials as a means to spread political PR inside the country. 

The story with the missile defence that the US was trying to build in 

Poland and Check Republic was a real gift from God for Russian officials. They loved it more than you can imagine and exploited this topic every now and then to show the Russian people who the real enemy is. Russian officials are the last people to be interested in ending the tension with US about that issue.

2. Russia's international weapon trade (including trade with Iran) brings the best opportunity for corruption. 

Imagine that you are a manager of a company with a lot of 

money in a country where there is no law, no person to control your actions. Imagine that you as a manager want to sell something very expensive to another company in another country with a similar manager and similar rules. If you have a particularly fantastic imagination, you already see yourself as one of the richest people in the world. Now try to imagine how you would view somebody who sends you a letter asking you to abandon all that in exchange of something that you don't really want... That's the way Russian officials see Obama now.

As a continuation The New York Times published yesterday another article where Dmitry Medvedev made an obscure comment about the letter:

“If we talk about some bargain or exchange, I can say that the issues were not raised in this way, because it’s counterproductive,” Mr. Medvedev said at a news conference in Madrid, where he was meeting with the Spanish prime minister.

“What we are getting from our U.S. partners shows at least one thing, that our U.S. partners are ready to discuss the issue,” he said. “That’s good, because only a few months ago we were getting different signals — that the decision has been made, there is nothing to talk about, that we will do everything as it has been decided.”

Obama and his Russia advisers should understand as soon as possible that they speak a language that is not understood in Russia and that they deal with a different political system and different mentality. They should know they won't gain by trying to deal with a criminal band by the same means one would deal with a choir of boys in a local church.